Clinton lays out campaign 'framework'

MANCHESTER, N.H. — Two days before the toughest fight in her career in electoral politics, Hillary Rodham Clinton built a frank case against electing Barack Obama president at a four-way debate at Saint Anselm’s College in Manchester.

“Words are not actions,” Clinton said, contrasting her record with Obama’s. “And as beautifully presented and passionately felt as they are, they are not action.”

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Clinton’s campaign has made narrow forays against Obama with increasing vigor toward the end of last year, but Saturday night she laid out what her chief strategist, Mark Penn, later called “framework” against Obama. She accused him of moving to the political center on issues like health care and security, of dodging tough votes, and of accepting the support of lobbyists he denounced. She cast him as a man of talk, not action, and cast herself as a pragmatist — capable of bringing change, and aware of its limits.

“We don't need to be raising the false hopes of our country about what can be delivered,” she said. “The best way to know what change I will produce is to look at the changes that I've already made.”

Obama drifted largely above the fray, and succeeded in keeping his cool and avoiding trouble. But Clinton faced a fierce defense from former Sen. John Edwards, who was acting as Obama’s surrogate and associating himself with Obama’s message of change.

“Any time you speak out powerfully for change, the forces of status quo attack. I didn't hear these kind of attacks from Sen. Clinton when she was ahead. Now that she's not, we hear them.”

Clinton responded with a rare flash of handwaving pique. “I want to make change, but I've already made change. I will continue to make change,” she said. “I'm not just running on a promise of change. I'm running on 35 years of change.”

Obama avoided answering her assaults on specific points — that he has senior campaign officials who are lobbyists, for instance — but he did defend the power of inspiration.

“The truth is, actually, words do inspire, words do help people get involved, words do help members of Congress get into power so that they can be part of a coalition to deliver health care reform, to deliver a bold energy policy,” he said. “Don’t discount that power."

Clinton’s aggressive posture seemed to indicate that, despite assurances from her aides that New Hampshire voters will ignore Obama’s victory in Iowa’s caucuses last week, and despite polls showing a close race, Clinton feels her back against the wall. Before her Iowa defeat, Clinton led in most New Hampshire polls. But two public polls released Saturday showed the race close, and two others showed Obama well ahead, with Edwards trailing.

The debate showed two candidates who had switched places, and Obama took to the front-runner role comfortably, never losing his cool. He responded patiently to Clinton’s criticism, and received a gift from the debate’s moderator, Charlie Gibson, in the form of the debate’s first question, which was about a foreign policy issue on which he has worked in detail in the Senate: nuclear security.

“My job as commander in chief will be to make sure that we strike anybody who would do America harm when we have actionable intelligence do to that,” he said, also taking the opportunity to add that “this is something that I've worked on since I've been in the Senate.”

Clinton, no longer the front-runner, remained the focus of much of the attention of the moderator and her rivals, which also included Bill Richardson. Soon after she appeared to lose her cool, Clinton was presented with poll results showing that voters don’t find her likable.